1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 perlwin32 - Perl under Win32
11 These are instructions for building Perl under Windows (9x, NT and
16 Before you start, you should glance through the README file
17 found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
18 was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
19 which this software is being distributed.
21 Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
22 known limitations of this port.
24 The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
25 only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In
26 particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
29 You may also want to look at two other options for building
30 a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin and
31 README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to
32 build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods
33 will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but
34 you will also need to download and use various other build-time and
35 run-time support software described in those files.
37 This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
38 port of Perl to Win32 platforms. The resulting Perl requires no
39 additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
40 system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
43 Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
44 Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
45 Mingw32 with GCC version 2.95.2 or better
47 The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler. Support
48 for it is still experimental. (Older versions of GCC are known
51 This port currently supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
52 is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be
53 able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
54 See L<Usage Hints> below for general hints about this.
62 You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
63 Visual C++ under Windows NT or 2000, nmake will work. All other
66 dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
69 A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
71 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip
73 (This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained from
74 http://www.wticorp.com/dmake/. As of version 4.1PL1, the original
75 sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems.
76 A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
78 Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
79 in the README.NOW file).
81 There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
82 compilers. Namely, if a distribution have C files named with a mixed
83 case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
84 with all lowercase letters, and every time when dmake will be invoked
85 to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
86 For example, Tk distribution have a lot of such files, resulting in
87 multiple recompiling everytime dmake is invoked. To avoid this, you
88 may use the script "sncfnmcs.pl" after successful build. It is
89 available in the win32 subdirectory.
93 Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
94 popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
95 If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
98 The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
99 "command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x. You will need to
100 use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
102 The surest way to build it is on Windows NT, using the cmd shell.
104 Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The
105 build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
109 If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
110 (The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
111 work for MakeMaker builds.)
113 See L</"Make"> above.
115 =item Microsoft Visual C++
117 The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
118 You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
119 like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
121 You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
122 you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
123 under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
124 and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
125 latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
126 make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
128 =item Mingw32 with GCC
130 GCC-2.95.2 binaries can be downloaded from:
132 ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
134 The GCC-2.95.2 bundle comes with Mingw32 libraries and headers.
136 Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
137 in the README for the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment
138 variables (usually ran from a batch file).
140 The version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe released 7 November 1999 left out
141 a fix for certain command line quotes, so be sure to download and install
142 fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe too.
144 You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
154 Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
155 This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
156 versions of nmake that come with Visual C++, and a dmake "makefile.mk"
157 that will work for all supported compilers. The defaults in the dmake
158 makefile are setup to build using the GCC compiler.
162 Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
163 the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various
164 build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
166 You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
167 CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
169 The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
170 may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
173 If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
174 enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
175 bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
176 on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
177 is part of the "libdes" library (written by Eric Young) which is widely
178 available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example,
179 "ftp://fractal.mta.ca/pub/crypto/SSLeay/DES/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
180 name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
181 you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
182 CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. The location above contains
183 many versions of the "libdes" library, all with slightly different
184 implementations of des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single,
185 self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements crypt(), so they may be
186 easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
189 Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
192 Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
196 Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
198 This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
199 perl56.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
200 under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for any reason, make
201 sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
207 Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
208 the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
210 There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT 4.0 or
211 Windows 2000. Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior
214 Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
215 native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
216 spaces. So don't do that.
218 If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
219 failures in op/stat.t. Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
221 If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
222 arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
223 default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
224 from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
225 (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
227 If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you're risking
228 to face a problem with finding incorrect header files. Don't be surprised
229 when during compiling perl extension "Tk" you will fail because both perl
230 and tk contain a header file with same name - "patchlevel.h". The latest
231 Borland compilers are free of this misbehaviour, and they even invented
232 option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility as "Use old Borland
233 search algorithm to locate header files".
235 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
239 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
240 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
241 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
242 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
243 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
244 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
245 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin> and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
248 set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
250 If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
251 installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
252 sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
254 set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
260 =item Environment Variables
262 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
263 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
264 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
266 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
267 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
268 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
269 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
271 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
272 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
274 Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
275 values if you choose to put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from
276 C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
277 Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
278 following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
280 lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
281 lib standard library path to add to @INC
282 sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
283 sitelib site library path to add to @INC
284 vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
285 vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
286 PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
288 Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
289 of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
290 separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
294 By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
295 which provides portable globbing.
297 If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
298 filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
299 to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
302 =item Using perl from the command line
304 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
305 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
306 with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
308 The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
309 the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
310 First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
311 COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
312 redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
313 executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
314 command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
315 upon which Perl was built.
317 It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
318 runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
319 wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
320 shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
321 using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
322 character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces
323 and other special characters in arguments.
325 The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
326 quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
327 based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
328 passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes can be used to
329 prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. You can
330 put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and
331 enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and
332 the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by
335 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
336 double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
337 be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
338 the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make
339 this type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
340 been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this appears
341 to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
342 line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
343 the caret as a quote character).
345 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
347 This prints two doublequotes:
349 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
353 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
355 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
357 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
359 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
361 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
363 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
365 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
367 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
369 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
371 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
373 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
375 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
377 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
380 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
381 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
383 One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
384 Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
385 that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
386 therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
387 Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
390 =item Building Extensions
392 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
393 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
394 Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
396 Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
397 in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
398 http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
399 porting modules that don't readily build.
401 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
402 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
409 where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
410 use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
411 may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
412 fail), but most serious ones do.
414 It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
415 ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
416 either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
417 old version of nmake reportedly available from:
419 ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
421 Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
424 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/NI-S/Make-0.03.tar.gz
426 You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
428 Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
429 depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
430 important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:
432 make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
433 make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
434 any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
435 (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
437 If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use,
438 edit Config.pm to fix it.
440 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
441 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
442 the compiler for command-line compilation.
444 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
445 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
446 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
447 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
450 =item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
452 The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
453 as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
454 programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
455 This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
456 perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
457 However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
458 behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
459 compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
460 be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
461 alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
463 Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
464 about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
465 powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
466 */*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
467 4) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
468 entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
470 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
471 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
474 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
479 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
480 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
484 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
485 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
486 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
487 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
488 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
489 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
491 Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
492 Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
493 set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
494 to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
497 If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
498 command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
499 binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
500 what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
501 done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
503 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
505 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
506 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
507 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
508 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
509 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
510 extensions typically do not support those tools either and, therefore,
511 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
513 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
514 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
515 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
516 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
517 support. This bundle is available at:
519 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.151.zip
521 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
522 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
525 =item Running Perl Scripts
527 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
528 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
529 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
532 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
533 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
534 to use this to execute perl scripts:
540 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
541 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
542 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
543 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
544 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
549 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
550 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
551 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
552 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
553 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
554 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
558 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
559 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
561 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
562 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
563 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
564 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
565 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
566 4NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
567 startup file to enable this to work.
571 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
572 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
573 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
574 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
575 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
576 avoids both problems is possible.
578 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
579 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
580 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
581 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
582 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
583 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
584 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
585 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
586 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
587 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
589 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
590 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
591 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
595 =item Miscellaneous Things
597 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
598 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
601 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
602 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
603 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
604 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
605 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
608 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
609 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
610 find a mailer on your system).
614 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
616 Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if
617 set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications
618 the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the
619 the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly.
620 Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages
621 as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing configure
622 files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
623 or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl
624 updating it). The build does complete with
628 but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
630 Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
631 L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
632 surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
633 in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
634 that will be portable to other environments. See L<perlport>
635 for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
637 Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
638 in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
640 Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
641 behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
643 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
644 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
645 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
646 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
647 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
648 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
649 currently be considered unsupported.
651 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
652 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
659 =item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
661 =item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
663 =item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ing-simmons.netE<gt>
667 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
675 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
676 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
677 at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
680 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
682 GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
684 Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
686 Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
688 Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
690 Last updated: 22 November 2000